Celebrities with their Pit Bulls

[LostOne4Ever]

106. Lots of Abstracts

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#dcdcdc; padding-bottom:5px; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom:none; border-radius:0.4615em 0.4615em 0em 0em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pit_bull [div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]A 9-year (1979–88) review of fatal dog attacks in the United States determined that, of the 101 attacks in which breed was recorded, pit bulls were implicated in 42 of those attacks (42%). A 1991 study found that 94% of attacks on children by pit bulls were unprovoked, compared to 43% for other breeds. A 5-year (1989–94) review of fatal dog attacks in the U.S. determined that pit bulls and pit bull mixed breeds were implicated in 24 (29%) of the 84 deaths in which breed was recorded.

This again ignores that pitbulls are made of 4 different breeds (thus the percentage is 10.5%) and ignores population. Its also based on media reports which I showed in my previous link were unreliable.

For Source 27 I can not find more than an abstract to the study cited. That said they have more german shepards identified as attacking than pits in the first place (and treat all pits as a single breed). But 33 pits hardly sounds like a good sample size. I will concede that this suggests that they are more likely to attack unprovoked but I feel the sample size is too small want to find a copy of the full report before making any judgments

For the 5 year study they lump all 4 breeds of pitbull along with pitbull mixes to get their results and again ignores population. Again news sources were used to ID the dogs.


[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]"A 15-year (1991–2005) review of dog attack fatalities investigated by the Kentucky Medical Examiner determined that pit bulls were implicated in 5 of the 11 fatal attacks (45%). Another 15-year (1994–2009) review of patients admitted to a Level I Trauma Center with dog bites determined that pit bulls were most often involved in these attacks: of the 228 patients treated, the breed of dog was recorded in 82 attacks, and of these, 29 (35%) of the attacks were by pit bulls (all other dogs combined accounted for the remaining 65% of attacks). In 45% of the attacks, the dog belonged to the victim's family. The authors wrote:

Attacks by pit bulls are associated with higher morbidity rates, higher hospital charges, and a higher risk of death than are attacks by other breeds of dogs. Strict regulation of pit bulls may substantially reduce the US mortality rates related to dog bites. "

The 15 year reviews once again only shows the abstract however, even the abstract admits that they only did Forensic odontological examinations on the suspected dogs in 4 of the 11 cases from source 29. Any information beyond that requires access to the full article. The other says the breed was identified but not how. Again, further information requires access to the full article. Did these sources get their sources from Vets or from the News Media? But again treats pit bulls as a breed and does not take population into account, it uses a median numbers rather than means (why? Were there outliers? If there were Outliers on what side of the bell-curve were they?), and the mortality rate is too low to even get a representative sample.

I also want to note the EXTREMELY small numbers in this study. In 15 years they had 83 cases of attacks and only 3 fatalities. This is far from a representative sample.

FURTHER note what it says here:

[div class="excerpt" style="background-color:#f0f0f0; border:1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top:none; border-radius:0em 0em 0.4615em 0.4615em; box-shadow:3px 3px 3px #999999;"]However, concerns about the reliability of the study's data, its conclusions, its methodology, and its use of citations were raised in a later letter to the editor of Annals of Surgery, by Karen Delise, founder of the National Canine Research Council, a pit bull advocacy organization.

The next paragraph includes its own criticism in what you cited but from the source material you can once again only get the abstract. But from that we see that pitbulls are once again being treated as a single breed and ignoring population.

Paragraph after that again ignores breed/population and include part-breeds all of which throw off the results.

The second to last paragraph confirms what I have been saying about news based results, and the last paragraph is talking about the need of experts in legislation and the reliability of DNA testing.

So all in all, the info from source 27 is the only one that I admit shows any type of problem with the breed, and I still question their sample size and I still have not found a free version of the full article to see how they determined breed, their methodology, etc. If you have access to this information I will review it, till then I will have to look on the net for the full article.